Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In wireless cellular networks, energy consumption is mainly drawn from base stations (BSs). According to the power consumption breakdown, BSs may consume more than half of the power of a cellular network. As the number of BSs increases along with expanded coverage and networks of competing service providers, reducing the power consumption of BSs may be a desirable goal for small carbon footprint cellular networks. Designing energy efficient base stations to reduce the energy consumption of cellular networks is one approach pursued by service providers.
Efforts on making cellular networks more “green” (i.e., environmentally friendly through increased use of renewable energy and reduced use of fossil-based energy) may further include designing power saving communication protocols that adjust the transmit power of the transceivers according to the traffic intensity as an approach. A further approach may include designing heterogeneous radio access networks which may utilize a diverse set of base stations to improve spectral and energy efficiency per unit area. Yet another approach may include designing off-grid BSs and communication protocols to enable utilization of renewable energy in cellular access networks. Renewable energy such as sustainable biofuels, solar, and wind energy are promising options for reducing the from-power-grid energy consumed by BSs and reducing the carbon footprint of cellular networks.